


like gravity

by motherofangst



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Post-Battle of Scarif, RebelCaptain Secret Valentine, RebelCaptain Secret Valentine 2018, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, and then, sort of ?, three and one things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 07:19:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13676928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motherofangst/pseuds/motherofangst
Summary: Three times that Cassian Andor came back for the war criminal Jyn Erso, and one time that Jyn came back for him.





	like gravity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [warqueenfuriosa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/warqueenfuriosa/gifts).



> My secret valentine gift for warqueenfuriosa! The prompt I was given was _"Finding my way home to you."_ I'm not sure if this is what you had in mind, but I hope you love it regardless! I wanted to do so much more with it, but unfortunately the month of February decided to be uncommonly busy for me and work.
> 
> Enjoy!!
> 
> Unbeta'd.

**_ONE ._ **

 

The storm of Jedha was long behind them -- the chaos. _No,_ Jyn knew better. It had been no storm; it was nothing but _man made_ in the destruction that swallowed Jedha City whole like a power hungry beast -- until it was nothing but a crater in the side of the planet where a Holy City once stood. Where her _surrogate father_ once poured his very life blood into the men that were under him in the structure they had been in _moments_ before escaping. She could still feel the cool metal of where she had tried to insist that Saw accompany her and Cassian. In hindsight, Jyn _knew better --_ knew that the Captain would not tolerate the likes of _Saw Gerrera_ on his ship. That the Alliance on Yavin 4 had long ago _cast out_ the extremist ideals that Saw and his men carried around in their chest cavities like a mantra.  
  
But Jyn had been desperate -- _she lost, and lost,_ it was the only constant in her life whereas _people_ were never a constant. _Loss_ seemed to be the only thing she could ever count on; so, when Saw was in her grasp, that desperation replaced her fire and drive and attempted to persuade the man she had been reared under -- who taught her to fight, _thrive,_ survive -- to come with them.  
  
Nevermind that logically, it wouldn’t have worked.  
  
Her jaw tightens at the thought, and she tries to banish the imagery of Jedha City’s destruction. Of Saw’s demise -- and, to do that, she couldn’t bring herself to look at Bodhi. To look at either of the Guardians. Knowing that all three of them had a tether to Jedha City that was now just a void in their chests. She could only imagine that they too were hurting.  
  
_But not Cassian --_ not the spy whose eyes were currently closed, shadows flickering down his cheeks as he listened to the encryption from the Alliance; no doubt instructing him on his part of the mission. He had had no attachment to Jedha -- no attachment to the Jedi, to the Temples, to the Holy City. He was not mourning as the rest of the ship was, he was merely focused on the next dot in the map of his mission. The next step to completing it and etching another deep line on the ledger of his success so that he could boost to his inner compulsion.  
  
And that left her wondering fleetingly -- was there anything, anywhere, _anyone_ that Cassian Andor was attached to? _Likely not,_ a bitter voice in the back of her head told her.  
  
_Then why --_ another asked -- _did he come back?_  
  
She hadn’t thought on it, not until now. He _had_ what he needed from her, Saw was dead and Cassian had the pilot. What had he needed her for? Nevermind that she hadn’t _admitted_ quite yet that she had heard the message, she was going to wait until he finished receiving his _precious orders_ to speak up. To actually be a decent human being and allow the others on the ship a moment of silence to grieve for all that was lost in just those few minutes.  
  
_Why did he come back?_ There wasn’t one moment with them together that he didn’t act like she was a burden ; that he didn’t regard her as just something he had to _drag along_ because his superiors told him so -- that she was just another _tool_ in the puzzle of his mission. He could’ve left her there to perish beside Saw. But, he put himself at risk in the collapse of the structure to drag her out and to the ship. If anything had gone _differently_ \-- a collapsed hallway, an accelerated destruction, _anything --_ Cassian would’ve died along with everyone else there. And his mission would’ve been a loss.  
  
She almost wanted to ask ---  
  
“Set course for Eadu,” Cassian was pulling her out of her thoughts with a command to Kay-tu, who sat in the cockpit. ( “ _Setting course for Eadu._ ” )  
  
All of her other questions exiled themselves from her mind -- one eclipsing her thoughts instead, “Is that where my father is?”

  


**_TWO._ **

 

She was shivering -- she thinks. _I can’t leave him, I can’t --_ The words are forming and falling to the rain, lost to the wind and her own ears as Cassian pulls on her arm. He’s speaking, she thinks, but she can’t hear what he’s saying as he tries to tug her away from her father. Getting from the platform, where the heat of the fire and the chill of the rain meshed in a manner that only heightened the numbness in her heart that was beginning to spread from the cracks in it, to the ship was nearly a blue and black blur; only coming to when the ship door slams shut in the same manner that she harbors herself up in the vault in her mind -- darkness engulfing them as well as silence, only broken by the Captain slamming down his gun and beginning to strip off his damp outerwear.  
  
The numbness was soon replaced with something else -- something she knew well, welcoming it into her bones like an _old friend;_ anger. Rage. Something red hot that licked at her bones in the same manner that the flames threatened to consume the platform on Eadu.

“ _You lied to me--”_ she bites out at Cassian, turning her gaze to her betrayer, venom in her breath and lungs -- gaze almost as deadly as the sniper rifle that never fired. The spy was nothing but bricked up sharp lines and durasteel eyes. ( _“You don’t know what you’re talking about --”_ )  
  
No -- … this kind of anger was not familiar to her. This anger was _personal._ He had _lied_ to her. They weren’t there to _find_ her father and take him back to Yavin, they were there for Cassian to _kill him._ She _should’ve known better --_ should’ve know that, under the thumb of Draven, Cassian was there to put Galen down instead of taking him in. Cassian didn’t know the definition of mercy.  
  
_Did he?_  
  
The anger blinds her to the rest of the reality -- the reality that would crash down between Eadu, the darkness of space, and her talk with the Alliance council. _He came back --_ once the mission was deemed a failure and the Alliance ships started reigning down on the platform, Cassian could’ve left. After all that he had had bred into his bones and carved into his very soul, _he should’ve left._  
  
But he hadn’t.  
  
Once again he had put himself at risk -- not knowing if Jyn was even still _standing_ when he had thrown his sniper on his back and raced down, he could’ve gotten himself killed by his own _rebellion_ coming down and saving her.  
  
That didn’t matter in that moment, only the welcoming blanket of her rage that was aimed at Cassian like a crosshair -- only disturbed slightly by the rock of the ship clearing the storm.  
  
( _“You can’t talk your way around this --” “I don’t have to--”_ )  
  
The brush of Cassian’s shoulders past hers left her dissatisfied, the rage still flaring and bubbling in her chest with no where to aim it -- spinning over her shoulder to watch him exit the cabin. To leave her alone and fuming with her anger.  
  


**_THREE_ **

 

The ship’s sway was familiar, but here was a deep set panic in her throat as Bodhi pushed the ship into hyperdrive and took them out of the destruction that tried to nip at the heels of the ship -- hands coming to grip harder than she meant at Cassian’s shoulders. Not that Cassian noticed, eyes closed with an expression that seemed _at peace,_ chest heaving with slow and even breaths. The breathing, the shake of his lungs, reminded her that he was alive despite it all.  
  
Again, he had come back. With sand in her nail beds and hair, she idly brushed and his shoulders as if it would help his state -- he was dying, she could feel it in the flutter of his heartbeat when her fingers grazed his skin. She was no medic, so she didn’t know what the extent of damage was caused in his tumble downwards in the Citadel data tower ; perhaps he shouldn’t have even been walking, as she recalls him casting the majority of his weight on her on the way to the turbolift and to the beach where the both of them had collapsed, unwilling to go any further -- and with nowhere else to go in the first place -- readied themselves to face their end; with everything they could’ve done _completed._  
  
She hadn’t anticipated an aftermath. She hadn’t anticipated Bodhi and Tonc sweeping them from the beach and dragging an unconscious Cassian into the ship before they left the crater of Scarif behind them.  
  
_He had come back to her --_ whereas he could’ve accepted his defeat on the grating where he had hit, where he was surely in pain and a weaker man would’ve let his misery consume him, he clawed his way back to the surface and stepped out to shoot down the man in white from the smoke. _I’m glad you came --_ she had told him, his warmth steady and calming against the approaching waves of the Death Star.  
  
Fingers twist themselves into the ruined clothing that he donned -- _come back for me just one more time, Cassian,_ she begged of him mentally, pressing her forehead to his chest where the proof of life fluttered anxiously under her attention.

 

+  ** _ONE_**

 

When he had woken, he had been notified that Jyn was _gone --_ they didn’t tell him where she had gone to, but he didn’t ask. It was easy enough for him to figure out on his own; Mon Mothma promised her she was _free_ once she assisted them, and he assumed that she had taken that promise to heart and left the Alliance far behind her in _her past_ where everything else that hurt her resided.  
  
He was disappointed, he wouldn’t deny as much -- even as the death of the _planet killer_ caused a victorious stir within the Rebellion, there was something that ached inside of him. The absence of Jyn was a possibility he didn’t acknowledge to be the source of the ache. Instead, he cast it’s reasoning on the death of some of his crew -- of _Rogue One_ \-- and the deaths of countless rebels that had been sent to Scarif to assist them. He had been the _Captain,_ this was his crew. His mission, even if Jyn was the one who had lead it by heart. He was the one responsible for the deaths -- _it’s okay,_ he thought to himself. He was used to shouldering a debt such as that.  
  
His back ached -- an ache that was hollow all the way down his spine as he made his way to the bannister of the tower of the Alliance base; letting his gaze flicker over the black dark of the sky as if he could recreate the destruction of the Death Star by just will alone -- he had been still unconscious when _Luke Skywalker_ had found Galen’s flaw and destroyed the mighty weapon, and him not seeing its destruction was the only thing he truly regretted.  
  
He had heard they would be leaving Yavin soon -- in anticipation of the Empire seeking to find revenge for what had been done to cripple them. So, even if he had been told he didn’t need to leave medical until they cleared him, he wanted to take in the humid terrain one last time before the chaos of the move swallowed him whole.  
  
For support, fingers curled around the bannister, and he found himself lost to both thoughts and memories alike. To the point that the reality around him because a distant blur in the back of his head -- if he was his usual self, he would’ve chasisted himself for it, as he didn’t expect or anticipate someone approaching; only knowing that there was another presence when they spoke up.  
  
“Shouldn’t you be resting?”  
  
He didn’t turn his eyes on her -- no, not right away. He froze, as if he might be hallucinating the voice; _that_ would be a first for him -- his mind creating something he longed to hear -- but not unheard of with the medication they had spared for his pain. Eventually, though, curiosity got the better of him and he turned his eyes in the direction of it. If it was a hallucination, it was convincing ; Jyn Erso standing mere feet from him with an unreadable expression on her features. _Oh,_ but the expression was _pleasant_ despite Cassian not being able to place it. Once he acknowledged her, she was stepping closer.  
  
To satisfy his doubt, Cassian removed one hand from the railing to reach out, fingers curling around her sleeve and his eyes flickering down to the point of contact -- “You’re here,” he states, his tone flat as he realizes he is stating the obvious.  
  
Jyn smiles, tugging her sleeve out of his grasp to instead capture his fingers -- in a manner that made his heart ache with the memory of knees by the water as two souls embraced death together. “I came back,” she tells him; and Cassian smiles in return, fingers giving her hand a tight squeeze.  
  
She releases his hand to instead step more so into his space – casting an arm around his waist and pulling him close; to encourage him to cast some of his weight on her ( not lost upon her that he should not be up and about ) as the breaking of light began to cast over the horizon of Yavin 4.  
  
And, in the bliss of the quiet, she hears a soft echo of earlier words from him – ones that seemed to harbor a slightly different meaning, “ _Welcome home—“_

 

 


End file.
